Ultimate Submission

by Cathryn Cooper

  But, right then, I felt nothing but excitement.

  He pulled away quickly and pulled my skirt down, but still left me in the stocks.

  A middle-aged couple came wandering in, and paused to read the information board.

  The man looked at Shaun, looked at me, then winked broadly at Shaun.

  ‘This sure has some potential,’ he said, his American accent strong.

  His wife swatted at him. ‘Not everyone thinks like you!’

  Shaun took another photo, pretending we were still posing.

  And all the time spunk was dribbling down my thighs.

  ‘Will you take a photo of us?’ he asked the couple, passing his camera over to the man as he stood by me.

  Afterwards they left, and Shaun at last released me.

  I rubbed at my neck and wrists, sore from having been in bondage so long.

  ‘Ow,’ I moaned. ‘That hurt.’

  ‘Are you being cranky again already?’ he asked.

  I raised an eyebrow, thinking where being cranky had just got me.

  ‘Maybe.’

  He smiled

  The photo’s still on the mantelpiece now.

  And now you could never describe Shaun as vanilla............

  Counting To Three In French by Bryn Allen

  He’d met her at a dinner party, one of those half-business, half-pleasure things for the university that had filled too much of his time that summer. The night was hot and Midwest muggy, but for some reason they’d been led outside for after-dinner drinks in the bugs and the flickering light of the citronella torches. He first noticed her then, pretty, tall but rounded with light brown hair and hard green eyes, and he had watched her as she leaned alone against a column on the shadowed patio while his friends chattered around him about movies and health clubs, watched until she had finally dipped into her purse and removed a sleek silver case. She’d popped it open and pulled out one slim dark cigarette, lit it and brought it up slowly to set between her full lips. Her eyes finally met his then, steady over the glowing ember, but he’d made himself look away. Kurt did triathlons. He didn’t do smokers.

  Now he lay naked in darkness, silken rope wrapped round his wrists and ankles, a blindfold tight on his face. He lay on the floor of the ancient Parisian apartment and could smell the layers, the generations, of smoke that had soaked into the wooden floor and thick plaster, the carpets and battered furniture. Over that ancient scent was a fresh cloud of harsh fume, drifting on the swell of French chatter that came from the next room where Marie was talking with her friends, telling them God knows what, preparing to bring them in here. In here to where he lay, helpless, alone, naked. Hard.

  The French had caused it. Kurt didn’t know a word, but its shape in Marie’s mellow alto had thrown him at that party. After he had looked away, after he thought he’d refused her, she’d walked up and spoken to one of his friends. He’d known she was asking about him by the way her cool eyes slid over his face and body as she spoke, but what they said had been lost to him. Holding his drink in the humid night air, surrounded by others but dreadfully aware of her presence, that sudden sense of helpless ignorance had made him lose track of his aversion to smoky clothes and mouths that tasted of ash. When she’d finally spoken to him in clear English, lightly layered with her native tongue, he heard sensuality and sureness, and deep in it all, command. Later that night he was on his knees in her apartment, mouth on her sex and hands cupping the warm smooth skin of her buttocks, bringing her to climax as she stood and stared down at him past the red coal of her dark cigarette. She had waited until morning before she had finally smoked him, and he’d brought her to orgasm twice more with his hands before that. That was how she wanted it, how she had ordered it, and so that was what he’d done. One night and she owned him, and he bent himself to her will, helpless in his hunger to please her, to bend himself to her desire.

  She had returned to Paris in the fall, had left him alone and lost without her sex and loving disdain. Kurt had been dominated before, learning and experimenting with three different women before Marie, but it was different with her. It was easy, nothing played at, just something that was between them. Simple, complete, total. When he first had the chance, he had flown to her, to a smoky city that he had never thought much of before, in a country he had never cared for. Two weeks with Marie, five days already gone, passed in sex, subjugation and cigarette smoke. Trapped in her city, trapped by culture and language, he was helpless in a way he had never been before, dependent on his lover for everything. Marie laughed at his uselessness and made him pay for her help with his tongue, his fingers, and his cock.

  In the other room, he heard chairs shuffle, floorboards creak, the sound of the door clicking open. He heard Marie’s voice, low and darkly amused, mixed with the sounds of soft laughter and excited French. Kurt couldn’t tell how many, one, two, a thousand, they were coming into the room and staring down at him, naked and helpless and blind, so hard and wanting he was already dripping wet warmth down onto his belly. Footsteps surrounded him, soft pad of bare or stockinged feet intermixed with the clatter of heels, then silence as they stopped. Kurt could feel them staring down at him, staring with humour and disdain as they flicked the ash of their stinking Cloves and Marlboros over his bare skin, coating him in the grey dust dandruff of their nicotine angels. Beside his head, the ancient floorboards sighed and popped as someone stepped close to lean down and run a hand through his hair. In her beautiful accented whisper, Marie spoke to him, ‘All here now, pet. I want us to play a game with you. Each will have a turn, each will touch you three times, trying to make you mess yourself. You will try to contain yourself, exhibit your control. You must prove your mettle. Show some spine.’ Kurt nodded, excitement twisting with dread, the best of feelings, and listened to the rustle of whispers and clothes being shed. He wondered who was out there, if he had met them before in one of the crowded coffee shops or clubs that Marie had pulled him through, foreign and mute, what they looked like, were they all women, or had Marie included men in this? His jaw clenched, and he fought the urge to buck and twist, to try to pull free and see.

  Now in his extremity, someone came, and he heard a soft chorus chant out Un, then felt the hands. Warm fingers traced a feather touch on his lips, one parting them to stroke gently through and slip along teeth and tongue, then away. They came again and he sucked at them, hot and slim and long-nailed, and he could see in his mind the stain of ash and nicotine that must mark them. Deux came the chant, and spider light the fingers traced circles around his nipples before moving in to roll and tug them into hardness. Too light, a tickling torture that tormented as it pleased. Trois, and the hands lifted away, were gone, and then settled down again on his cock. Like a startled bird, it jerked up at the touch, and Kurt gasped at the intensity, felt how close he was to coming just with these first caresses. He heard laughter, and his panic and desire tightened as he fought to keep himself from climaxing as a hand wrapped around his shaft, firmly squeezing as another finger stroked the tip of his sex and spread the droplet of slick liquid that clung there over its swollen head. Kurt whined with the pleasure and felt himself move, hips fucking the hand even as he tried to reign himself in. Then the touch was gone, and he was alone and trembling on the floor.

  ‘Don’t embarrass me, pet. At least try to pretend you’re not pathetic.’ Marie’s voice was still light, but there was the cold note of threat to it that Kurt knew well, a promise of punishment if he were to disappoint. Listening to her, he didn’t notice the approach of the next person until the word Un cut through the air and he felt lips touch his ears, teeth bite light on the lobe. The sudden touch was more startling than erotic. He managed to regain some control even as he yelped at the contact. With Deux the mouth lifted and touched his throat, sucking and biting him lightly over the lines of his pulse, a sensation that always went through him. His newly found control began to slip rapidly as teeth pressed into his skin, until he felt something new, a harsh scrub against
his neck that made his hands clench even before the word stubble could form itself in his head. A new twisting anxiousness brought with it another wave of lust, and he began to really feel it now, the dizzy pull of separation that came over him during an intense session of dominance, when he really lost himself in what was happening and let go of everything but the experience. He missed the word Trois entirely, only knew distantly that it must have been spoken when he realized that the mouth was gone from his neck, that instead it had taken the tight knot of his balls into its warmth. Pulling free, he floated in the sensation of the tongue that twined and lapped at him until it was gone.

  Distant soft laughter, scolding French as bodies shuffled, a murmured Un, then hard soft against his lips a nipple pressed, while the other breast’s heat brushed against the side of his face. He opened his mouth and let it in to suckle, nursed on sweat and nicotine until it was lifted away. He licked his lips after it had slipped from them, missing the comforting erotic touch of it in his mouth, then came the next count. With Deux he felt both breasts return, large and heavy, not Marie’s. They pressed against his chest, big nipples rubbing over his small ones, their heavy softness stroking across him, the silk of them burning trails across his skin. Trois, and down his chest and belly they stroked, finally brushing over his cock so that he was cradled in the space between. She moved, pressed her breasts together; Kurt felt himself wrapped in them, surrounded by their softness until she slowly pulled away. Kurt lowered his hips, slowly realizing he had raised them to thrust deeper into the cleavage whose heat still ghosted on his skin. Outside of his head, out there, he heard more talking, the clink of glasses, and twisting anticipation and shame moved in slowly quickening currents through him.

  Footsteps finally close again, and a whispered Un followed by heat and scent and suffocation as a cunt pressed against his mouth. His gasp flooded his mouth with the taste of her, and he lapped at the soft flesh, not caring that he could only barely breathe. The woman pushed herself down into his face as he pressed his tongue up into her, and he heard a distant moan muffled by her thighs and felt her legs tremble against him. With a reluctant seeming slowness she moved then, pulling her sex away from his hungry mouth and went sliding down him until he felt the hot wetness of her resting on the skin of his chest. Lost, Kurt licked her taste from his lips and waited for what would come next. With Deux, her small, sweat slicked hand grasped his cock and pulled it up, and he groaned through clenched teeth as his body arched, working desperately to help her sheathe the painful hardness of his cock in her. Warm wet lips brushed him, then with one strong motion she rose up and then came down on him, her cunt clenching his cock as tightly as her hand had. In his distant space, Kurt could feel the currents of desire and torment begin to spin in him, to strengthen and turn in a growing gyre, a storm of release in whose slowly shrinking eye he centred himself. Another moan from the woman who rode him echoed through the eye, and from some far place he heard Marie say something in a different language. The woman above him stopped her rocking, relaxed her body’s grip on him and stood, leaving him wet and groaning in the storm. He could hear Marie’s soft laughter somewhere above him, and he knew she knew where he was.

  In a soft mutter he heard another order from her, then Trois, and the woman returned, pressing down on him again, naked skin warm against his chest, hair brushing across his face, buttocks pressed against his hips. The tip of his cock brushed against the hollow sheltered between her soft cheeks and he pushed forward as she pushed down, helping him sink onto her. He thrust hard, groaning, straining against the ropes that held him as the eye of his storm began to fray and collapse, all control lost as he fought to reach out to hold whoever it was down on him so he could finish; sheathed in her flesh, and with a sudden desperate cry, he was slammed back into himself, sensation pouring through him as he shuddered and came in her.

  When he finally stilled, his body slowly relaxing back to the floor below him, he could feel that the woman above him still moved and thrashed, her hands gripping tight on his forearms and her feet hooked around his calves. He pulled in his breath and listened to her whimpers, began to wonder about them as his heart stopped pounding, then someone yanked the blindfold away from his eyes.

  On him, a woman, slim and small with short dark hair panted, thrusting her hips up to Marie who stood over her and rubbed her stocking clad foot over the woman’s cunt. Marie flicked ash from her cigarette and stared down at Kurt, then flicked her eyes to the woman that he was buried in as she shuddered, groaned and stilled. Kurt felt her ass pulse around him as she came, and a low wash of pleasure went through him, making him close his eyes and sigh.

  ‘Not so long then, my pet. Your control is lacking.’ Kurt opened his eyes and stared up at his mistress, unable to cope with answering her. Behind her a couple stood, a heavy woman bare to the waist and a slim man with a thin graze of stubble. They spoke to each other in French, then the woman said something to Marie. She looked at the two of them, her foot still pressing down on them both, and then she nodded. The couple smiled, and without another word gathered up the woman’s shirt and bra and disappeared out the door.

  When the sound of the apartment’s door clicking shut came, Marie lifted her foot away, dropped the smouldering butt of her cigarette into a half empty glass of wine, and then plucked a short length of chain from around her wrist and snapped one end to the collar around Kurt’s neck, the other to the woman’s identical collar.

  ‘She is Gretchen. She belongs to me now, like you. A German, and another fucking purist non-smoker. You should get along fine.’ Marie stepped back and stared down at them. ‘Another thing in common, she doesn’t speak French either. Or English. Bonne nuit, my pets.’ Marie turned and stepped out of the room, snapping off the light and closing the door, leaving Kurt and Gretchen bound together by flesh and chain on the floor in the smoke and shadows.

  A Master And A Slave by Mark Steinhardt

  When I was in my mid teens I felt a sudden urge to do some reading and give myself an education. For want of a personal guide, I took the advice of the wise people at Penguin. If the book had a black spine (classics) or a grey spine (modern classics) then it must at least be worthy of my consideration. Orange spines were risky. They might be second-rate, frivolous even, and I wanted serious reading.

  After Kafka, Flaubert and Plato I felt obliged to wade into the Russians. I don’t think I ever finished one and after all these years I only remember how long it took carriages to get our aristocratic hero from the gates of his estate to the front door of the house. But I do remember reading an introductory essay on Ivan Turgenev that told me that at fifteen (my age) a kitchen maid was sent by his mother to his room to initiate him in the ways of love. I found this a transfixing thought. I was profoundly envious back then; now I am merely delighted by the imaginative possibilities, and no amount of hard-headed knowledge about the plight of the Russian poor and the abuse of power can spoil it.

  As Turgenev remembered it decades later, the girl came up behind him and took handfuls of his hair and said ‘Come.’ That’s all. Now, the future novelist was a tall lad, later to run to fat and be known as the ‘gentle barbarian’, so we may suppose he was seated, reading a slim volume of poetry, soft-bound in chamois leather, perhaps in the conservatory after dinner before the long summer twilight. He was engrossed in the romantic visions of Pushkin and did not hear Anna slip into the room.

  She pulls back his head by his clean, black hair and they look at each other upside down. He must be very confused. He has noticed Anna and been disturbed by her but she has never touched him and no one, least of all a servant, has ever stood over him in this way. But he senses something new and closes his book and remains as she has placed him, looking up into her strange inverted eyes, the cane chair creaking and the low reddening light blushing her throat. A coil of blond hair escapes from her cap and bounces gently. Anna holds this moment of reversed roles for as long as she dare, looking into his soft, smooth face, the healthy tee
th in the half-opened mouth, then down to the large, clean, unbroken hands on the book.

  She speaks her single word. It is enough. He is used to unexplained orders from his mother and supposes that by some roundabout means this is one of them. When the girl lets fall his hair and leaves the room, he follows.

  It is 1833 and Anna is a serf. She may be sold, flogged, separated from her family, branded or banished to Siberia. Without permission of her masters she may not leave the estate, rent land, borrow money, earn wages, own property or marry. She has not chosen to work in the kitchen of the great house but she considers herself fortunate. While Ivan’s mother is a fearsome, half-mad sadist who beats her children and servants daily for the most trivial offences and often for the pleasure of it, Anna enjoys the constant proximity of food, a clean, dry room and existence on the periphery of gracious living. And better the exhausting heat of the ovens than the annual struggle to endure the interminable Russian winter down in the village.

  Anna leads on upstairs, very slowly, trying to glide within her skirts, making a soft rustling sound in the quiet of the evening, bathing as much in the pleasure of being excused her normal duties as in the prospect of her new and special role. Her hand on the balustrade is white from baking, where normally by now it would be red from pot-scrubbing.

  It may be an order and she may have no choice, but this is a private matter and she glances along the landing before slipping into Ivan’s room and closing the door. Though she has seen it many times when helping the chambermaids, on this occasion it is utterly new. Where she was an outsider, hurrying a task, fearful of displeasing her mistress, now she belongs, is here for a purpose of her own, to share this room, command this room, even if only for a while. She looks at the brass bed with its rich mountain of white linen and smiles. That evil bitch; what can she know of this?